Is there a shortcut for Render in Houdini?

[magneto]

Hi,

When I am tweaking the render alot, I use the Render View pane interactively but there are also alot of times where I just want to adjust a couple things over 10-30 iterations. So I just use the Render menu > Start Render > mantra1 which opens the MPlay.

After this is there a hotkey or a way to assign a hotkey so whenever I press it, it re-renders the same node thus refreshing the MPlay?

Thanks

[lukeiamyourfather]

You could create a script that always renders /out/mantra1 and then add it to the shelf (where you can add a hot key).

[bloomendale]

is this not enough?

[magneto]

Thanks guys.

@bloomendale: That's better Still if there way a key I wouldn't have to move my mouse to a specific location for every render.

I might write a script later on.

[DanBode]

If you hit alt+shift+a in houdini, it brings up the aliases &variables window. In on the bottom of the aliases tab are two text boxes. If you enter F2 (or F and any number between 2 and 12) in the first text box you can set a script to run when you hit the F2 key. So if you put F2 in the first box and render mantra1 in the second box, pressing the F2 key on your keyboard will render the mantra1 rop.

I haven't been able to get this to work with rops that aren't in /out, so any time I need to deal with that, I use a fetch rop in /out that points to the rop I want a hotkey for.

[magneto]

Thanks Dan, that's a great trick. I am not very experienced with rops. What do you mean by rops that aren't in/out?

Also yours rely on names too, right?

[Erik_JE]

Thanks Dan, that's a great trick. I am not very experienced with rops. What do you mean by rops that aren't in/out?

Also yours rely on names too, right?

You can also create a ropnet in SOPs and put your rops inside of that.

For shortcut you can go to Hotkeys and search for "Launch output driver" and assign some keyboard shortcut to it. Launch output driver renders whatever mantra node you last used when rendering the way @bloomendale suggested. This method won't be name dependent but instead depend on whatever mantra node was used last.

[magneto]

Erik, you are a genius. That's exactly what I wanted. Great trick

Btw what is the advantage of creating rops in SOPs?

Edit: I just tried this and it worked but when I render mantra2 by using the Render menu and then call "Launch output driver", it still renders mantra1. Is this normal?

Edited November 22, 2012 by magneto

[Erik_JE]

Erik, you are a genius. That's exactly what I wanted. Great trick

Btw what is the advantage of creating rops in SOPs?

Edit: I just tried this and it worked but when I render mantra2 by using the Render menu and then call "Launch output driver", it still renders mantra1. Is this normal?

Some people just like SOPs a lot, don't know any other reason.

Yes that is normal. It won't work if you Render through the render menu. You have to select the mantra node as in the picture for it to work.

[anim]

...

Some people just like SOPs a lot, don't know any other reason.

...

the reason is that you sometimes want ROP network to be part of your asset, living neatly inside prepared for some action

that's why you can create any main context as a network inside any other context

and believe me, having complex ROP dependency network already setup every time you put some of your complex tools into the scene just one button click away or silently processing data automatically is a great time saver